#just make these demigods so fucking op and cool...

[katkalis-the-fanartist]

I wonder if you got age hc for the misers and their fam

I do actually!

Fitting you asked this because I remember you in particular asking me to doodle a teenage heat miser, but...it stumped me. Not only because hes supposedly teen-ish in the movie but also idk how to do a proper edgy teen and also...my personal hcs dont have any of the mother nature fam being teens at all. Ever.

So, I headcanon the "children" of Mother Nature to have never even started as infants at all. They were never born naturally. No no no, Mother Nature created them in ways unbeknownst to mankind. This all goes along with my hcs of the nature fam being otherworldly beings with indescribable power. Think about it: exactly how crazy it is to control even just the weather.

She created her progeny when whatever god or what have you created life itself. Father Time was there as well, created by this god of sorts, but never crossed with Mother Nature in any way. (Hes more powerful than she is by far btw, I should do something with him)

The family can also have different forms. Forms of the natural phenomenons themselves, humanoid forms, their true incomprehensible forms. Some believe they use humanoid forms to easily interact with humans while other theorize that they simply find amusement living out their existence as a humanoid would.

Then also the stuff I talked about where they have infinite physical bodies on infinite planets of many weathers. All that lovely insane stuff.

I'm sure you were probably expecting cute baby, preteen, or teen stuff, but alas, that is not what I have. Unless ofc you want me to SPECIFICALLY think like that!

[somewhereincairparavel]

Literally where do people get the idea that Jason was full of himself and that he thought he was better than Percy? This is legit brought up in so many 'why-i-hate-jason-grace" arguments it just screams lack of reading comprehension and obvious Percy bias saltiness. Like just say you are bitter that Jason is written as percy's equal and that you want Percy to have nobody rival him 💀

Never once in his povs did he ever think about how much better he was, on the contrary it's just him not feeling good enough about himself. He and Percy NEVER said anything bad about eachother.

His and Percy's rival is just a joke between two powerful demigods who have rival dads, that's literally it. Even if Jason did indeed think he's better, so what about it? What's the big deal?

he has worked hard and accomplished great things, so he has like, every right to be confident in his power, stop acting like hes all weak and inferior when he canonically killed a titan with like his bare fucking hands till the point Krios swore vengeance on him. No he's not "weak" or morally inferior to Percy as a person. You are merely trying to cope. Not to mention the way people judge a character's worth SOLEY based on their abilities is a huge red flag in itself, but that's a discussion for another time.

he shouldve canonically had more achievments and power than he originally got in the books as a son of jupiter. but rick made Percy too OP and fumbled jason for the sake of keeping percy's spotlight intact. Has it ever dawned on people that Percy is shown to have cool abilities like bending tears but Jason is never shown to have abilities like controlling lungs? Yeah, that's authors privilege for ya.

Y'all put Percy in an obnoxiously high pedestal and that's not a good thing. It diminishes his flaws and makes him appear so saint like and Gary Stu even though he's not. the fact that ppl get so sensitive over their rivalry and try to belittle jason by making up scenarios (like claiming jason thinks he's superior and shit) and go around saying that to ppl to reduce his value DESPITE being well aware that he has like enough hate already, is so insanely petty. BOTH Jason and Percy deserve equal amounts of respect.

God forbid a teenage boy say he's better than the other as a joke, he's such a terrible, stuck up, and shitty person who deserved death for that, isn't he?

[beevean]

(Same anon as before)

Haha, sorry for making you think of Tangle's and Whisper's apology😅 But I must say, that is also something I had in mind when I wrote that I didn't expect the other characters to give Silver the apology he likely deserves if they go the route of the others ragging on him first. So far, I do not think that route is entirely proven with the solicit only stating "Awkwardness ensures.", but... Meh, I truly just have a bad feeling about it, not helped by the whole bit of the hasty accusations and what happened in Archie beforehand. I would not be surprised if 'Silver acts like an idiot and the others are snapping at him for getting in the way and being distrusting of this Cool New Diamond Cutter' were to happen, let's put it that way.

Honestly, with "I hate when the story is about characters making a fool of themselves" you hit the nail on the head: we know it is going to be incredibly cringe and awkward and uncomfortable! The solicits of both issue 63 and 64 state as much! ("But he's too busy being star-struck over Whisper to notice that he's interrupting their training!" and ".... he jumps to a conclusion that leads him to some hasty accusations. Awkwardness ensures." as prime examples.) And it might just be a complete disservice to Silver's character, both personality- and power-wise (you are NOT going to tell me Silver's PK is less powerful and skilled than Whisper's Wispon usage. Meteor Smash, anyone? Stopping the Eclipse Canon beam in that Sonic Channel story?), on top. Hopefully the plot line of Sonic and Blaze will indeed be something better handled than what the Silver and Diamond Cutters plotline is shaping up to be.

The thing is that "Character spends the entire runtime pointing out that Something is Wrong, gets arbitrarily brushed off, they are eventually proven right" is just... such a cliché plot. I'm pretty sure it's a stock episode in every Western cartoon. At least one can argue that the Whispangle Drama was supposed to teach a lesson about trauma and how to handle it (even if it was utter shit at it), but this is just a time waster - we know that the new guy is Mimic, it's so obvious from the cover, what's the point of going through this song and dance? Unless there's some Big Twist about it... and uhhh don't trust IDW with twists anymore...

Also yeah, you know what? Why is Silver even a Whisper fanboy? Whisper may be cool as a sniper, but Silver is by far one of the most OP people in the Sonicverse. This is not like him being amazed by the desert because it's still better than the future he grew up in, so he clearly has different standards of what counts as impressive, it's just... she uses Wisps, big deal, he can fucking stop a meteor thrown at him by a demigod.

In fact, I'll say that in general, the way Silver was used to introduce Whisper is... not very good. Compare this:

Tangle's introduction, where she displays her combat prowess and immediately befriends Sonic, showing her attitude and dorkiness in a natural way...

... and Whisper's, where before we actually see her in action, we get told by a canon character about how Amazing and Cool she is (let alone that said canon character is warped OOC), because she saved his life, yeah the random sniper is so fucking awesome man, trust me! Funnily enough, the first time we see her, she's just struggling to open a door, lmao.

(also i just realized that calling whisper "guardian angel", something she was never referred to since then, implies that they're all christian)

(and sonic is being a dick. in other news, water is wet)

Basically, it's amateur fanfiction-tier writing, which is odd because Flynn nailed it with Tangle.

Sorry for the tangent 😅 I guess I'm trying to say that Silver's writing in IDW has always been severely flawed and this plotline just sounds like it's going to be very annoying, unless you love uwu Cute Dork Round-Eyed Silver-kun. Which is most of his modern fans, from what I gather.

[that-queer-blob]

Agreed. Though I am a bit happy that they didn't drag adhd and dyslexia explicitly into the show?

(woops, this got... long. none of this was said against you, op, i agree with your post that making the show deal with ableism against schizophrenia but doing that by making mist-hidden monsters stand-ins for hallucinations or delusions is not the move the writers thought it was, and, in my opinion, that crude and forced comparison between those things is really similar to how RR tried to represent ADHD and dyslexia in the books whilst also claiming that they were basically superpowers to demigods with the only apparent downsides being forgetting things occasionally, not being able to sit still, and having trouble spelling things. there's a lot more to these disabilities that the people trying to write them don't know and it shows.)

For 2005, PJO was good, in the intent to show that ADHD and dyslexia weren't just made up to excuse laziness or something someone chose to have and rather than simply being born that way. But that's where the good kinda ends. RR basically just took his son's symptoms and slapped them onto every single demigod (except for Frank for some reason) and called it a day.

Any level of research into ADHD or dyslexia will tell you that that's not how that works, and then you still have to deal with the fact that it's not really affecting the characters at all. (I am NOT talking about the stupid demigod power thing. Mental disabilities do not give people superpowers). We occasionally get a reminder of "oh, I have adhd so I can't sit still and I lose pencils a lot" or "I can't read that sign" or whatever but it's always done in passing. It doesn't have a lasting effect at all on these characters.

And going back to the whole superpower thing, I rarely see anyone talk about how weird it is that this fandom talks about ADHD and dyslexia like they are actual powers. Read how they're described in the damn wiki:

If I removed the context of PJO from this, would you think that these descriptions were a dead-ringer for ADHD and dyslexia? (Also, large aside, the fuck do you mean "divine ancient greek" and "mortal languages"? What the fuck do you think the Ancient Greeks spoke? Are they not mortals anymore or something?)

I truly think that it would have been better to remove the characters being ADHD and dyslexic from them being demigods. If something were written now that had to excuse including mental disability by intrinsically linking it to that character being supernatural or divine in nature, I would not be surprised to see people calling it out. I don't see why we shouldn't with something that is still in the media zeitgeist, even if it was written nearly 19 years ago.

And that isn't nearly everything. I could write freaking essays about this. Why is it that every demigod (except Frank for whatever the fuck reason) knows that they have ADHD and dyslexia? How did they get diagnosed? Percy knew before he knew he was a demigod yes, but that's not going to be the same for every demigod, especially AFAB demigods during the 2000s and 2010s. Why the hell did RR think it was okay to say "oh medicine is bad and monsters are the ones who try to force them on you to get rid of your superpowers" in the first few chapters of the freaking first book? And why the hell does Frank, despite everyone claiming before that every demigod has fucking ADHD and dyslexia not have fucking ADHD and dyslexia??? And why the hell did RR think that it was okay to follow up with him saying "wow, adhd and dyslexia is so cool, i wish i had them!"

I would slam my head against a wall if I didn't have a headache already from this.

Things i hate about the PJO show

I bet you thought this was gonna be a joke about how i love this show and actually don't hate it.

But i want to murder whoever did lightning. Why is the only thing i can see of Annabeth her jacket and not her face? And Grover just isn't there Like it's not even racism cause half of the time you can't see Percy.

Also is it schizo rep instead of dyslexic adhd rep now? because if so, it's a very interesting stance. I.e. like it shows the problems with ableism that people with schizophrenia face. But at the same time, you know making the demigods see things that are "really" there but people don't believe them, is ... iffy

[atomsmoon]

Dsmp Olympus be like:

DreamXD

Most recognized and old god on the server, at first because of his powers and protection of the Holy Land... then he started showing up just to simp for the British Mushroom guy and he lost all of the intimidation factor.

Has a creepy voice lately does anyone know wassup w that?

He's around fairly often.

WILL show up if you try to set up a table on an ancient looking portal OR if you call him a homeless teletubby.. go ask Techno about it.

People are either chill with him or don't want him to show up cuz that means trouble.

Drista

Definitely the most powerful AND most chaotic.

Dream's (and DreamXD's?) sister.

Shows up once every three months to wreck havoc and hand out a couple of impossible blocks.

She built an invisible staircase to fool people into thinking they can reach the sky (and mostly to make them fall down)

Signed her name in obsidian to assert dominance.

Her and Tommy are actually good friends (their allyship first started to piss off Dream, now they enjoy messing around on the server together c: )

Probably has a good relationship w Foolish, Olympus God buddies share shulkers c:

Foolish

Totem of Undying, the new guy on the block.... unless?? He's been around long enough to have a tragic past as the Totem of Death.

He can pew pew lighting.

Apparently him and Eret go way back? Either that or he knew Herobrine 👀.

He's oddly letting himself be pushed around by two minors with a piglin child but hey at least they will pay him.. right? Guys? gUYS?? (Oh also don't comment on the chandelier it's a sore subject).

Is the tallest mf on the server reaching 27ft.. no wonder his builds are so massive.

Has recently entered a love triangle between Ponk and Sam... someone pray for him, he needs it.

Callahan

Probably the most elusive god on the smp.

He never talks. Ever. Everyone loves him nonetheless.

Sometimes reaches out as <Server> in chat or he shows up with his Captain America and Reindeer outfit.. (i like to imagine him binging Marvel movies in the Olympus when he's got nothing else to do, which admittedly is most of the time)

Was at the site of Tubbo's nuclear test.. sightseeing?

He's the one to call when something's wrong

Generally the best

Deserves the world

Ok we love him moving on

Philza Minecraft

Was called the Angel Of Death once upon a time

He lost his wings to protect Wilbur from the L'manberg explosion... dearly misses flying.

Oooold friend of Techno, some stories say they ruled an ice ridden land called The Antarctic Empire

He's technically NOT immortal but Ageless aka he can die but he's always been too cool for that

His vibe is being done with everyone's shit, just don't mess with the people he loves.

People say he's the creator of the game. They are right. This is the truth now.

He's also the person everyone yells for for IT Support... ?

His only weakness are Baby Zombies, do not ask him about it.

Egg

Egg (evil)

Now onto the: GODS *?*

Technoblade

People chant "Blood For The Blood God" but his story is very confusing and complicated, is He getting the blood for the blood god or is he the Blood God himself? Nobody's sure but Everyone knows not to fuck with him.

He actually hybernates for several weeks on end, trusting Philza to look over him.

Has a thing for wither skeletons

Possibly old as hell (see long ass friendship w Philza)

Confusing and conflicting information about his nature, some say he's a straight up pig, some say piglin, some say he's a hybrid or wearing a mask... more info needed

He can and will kick Dream's ass

... still owes him a favor tho rip.

ERET

Immortal person too??

Herobrine/ Herobrine's descendant???

Idk fam everyone just thought "this normal dude has weird eyes" then Foolish rolls around and now the questions rise in number by the second

Is a Queen nonetheless

BadBoyHalo

Demon guy

Once said he's immortal till his best friend dies... now... he took one of his lives... *it's complicated*

Actually a nice dude before he got possessed by the evil egg.

Can fix weird problems with the servers cuz console access making him another person to yell for.

Mainly just hangs around in the main area talking about muffins.

Now...

I imagine Callahan and Drista mainly chilling up there, only occasionally swinging by to check what's going on. Foolish and Phil always enjoyed hanging around on the server, building and travelling respectfully. Eventually they all ended up in the same place, who's to know if they ever met eachother in their long lives.. (yes phil and foolish give us crumbs please it is an invitation).

Everyone else is more of a demigod entity to me (apart from bbh because i do entertain the thought that everyone who has op on the server is secretly a god BUT that would make Awesamdude a god which hMMMM, but also philza would be a demigod which kINDA MAKES SENSE because he ISN'T in fact immortal- imma stop myself)

Ah and DreamXD just followed Dream around till he got stuck in the prison... oh well.. more time to simp ig  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[crushing-on-nico-di-angelo]

Seven Nights in Cabin Thirteen

I’m inspired by another post I saw here that I didn’t wish to hijack lol, and OP deactivated or else I’d link their account here. credits to @the-ghost-king for the idea of a demigod therapy/Will being a past drug addict on this post. Yes this is a bad fic. It’s also my first fic ever. Please criticize if you see anything

Will never thought that he would ever appreciate his first monster attack. He was seven years old, and in hindsight his teacher probably only worked there to prey on young demigods (at least, that’s why he suspects the attack happened so early in his life compared to other demigods). But when Lee Fletcher sat him down 4 years later and told him that he was trans and would now be known as Lee instead of his birth name, Will knew that everything happened for a reason.

After many conversations with Lee about how he knew (gods bless that man’s patience) and with an older Athena camper who’s special interest dealt in psychology, Will realized the reason that he always felt disconnected from his mom and sisters in Austin was because he was like Lee. He was a boy.

Telling people wasn’t easy. Of course his older brother had to know; he was the one who introduced Will to this concept. Telling the rest of camp was as easy as telling Chiron, who told Dionysus, who always threatened to turn anyone into a dolphin if they talked shit about any trans kid. Telling his mom... that had to be the hardest part. How was he supposed to tell them? The only similarities they all had were that they were all musically inclined and that they were all girls.

Apparently, Will forgot that Naomi Solace was a musician. The music industry has more queers than an all girl’s school GSA. Her only questions were “Alright, what’s your name then, kiddo?” and “When do you want to set up an appointment with a therapist?” As for his siblings, well, let’s just say the oldest, Frankie, always knew. And it didn’t take long for seven-year-old Mickey to cut her doll-that-somehow-looked-exactly-like-Will’s hair and change his notes from high to low when she accompanied his singing on violin, as part of voice training.

Four years has passed since then and Will can hardly believe it. He’s stealth back at Austin because it’s just easier that way, but since a quarter of the camp knew him since he was seven, he figured there was no point; it isn’t like anyone treated him as though he wasn’t a man-- er, boy-- at camp anyways. So, life went on. He got his period for the first time during the Battle of Manhattan, that was no fun, but luckily Thalia was cool about it and made sure not to tell anyone. He started binding shortly afterwards, got a couple bruises hear and there. Kayla yelled at him for a week for that one, he remembers fondly. Discovered why it’s better to take off your contacts in the shower... that day isn’t such a fond memory. That was the first and last time he ever made himself bleed. Although, he will say that’s what sparked his interest in medicine and what made him the best doctor Camp Half Blood had seen in decades at the mere age of 15 years old. Life at camp was good, if a bit dull. He got used to the routine and the constant influx of damaged campers, the siblings and friends, and the always-perfect Texas Barbecue and Coke.

That is, until the War Between the Camps happened. Lou Ellen woke Will up before sundown that day and told him their plan. They were to hide in the tall grasses and wait for Camp Jupiter to show their ugly faces. Cecil had the genius idea to paint their faces and arms black so they’d blend into the night better, and Will supposes in the hubub of everything they forgot that his hair nearly (”nearly”) glows, even at night. Until Mr. Nico “I’m so smart, I nearly killed myself shadow travelling” di Angelo pointed it out. Whatever, it made sense at the time. They won the war against Gaea, not without sacrifice, and they finally, finally got past all the wars and destruction and health issues that they were able to just hang out and get to know each other as friends.

And boy, was their friendship amazing. Nico had the best taste in music from Will’s eyes, and that’s saying something because Will is a music snob. Nico could be a little stubborn at times, but that’s alright because so was Will (”Gods damn it, Nico, if you don’t take your medication right this second I will-” “You’ll what? Hm? You’ll force it down my throat? Last I checked that was abuse.”). They fit together so perfectly and became fast friends.

It wasn’t always sunshine and lollipops, though. What is, for a demigod? Will relapsed once and passed out right in front of Nico’s cabin. He was crashing from an exciting high that he hadn’t experienced in so long, and he felt so tired and ashamed of himself. Methamphetamine was a goddamned bitch, so while he was coming out of withdrawals, he made Nico promise not to let him leave the cabin for a week were simmering down. He had to make sure something like this never happened again. They Iris Messaged  Chiron and explained the situation, and he understood. He made sure to contact the older son of Dionysus who had been Will’s therapist in the past and said what had happened and they agreed on a session for soon after Will got mostly over his cravings.

So now they had a week of downtime together. Awesome.

“Solace, do you need anything? Are you okay?” Nico asked towards the end of the first full day that withdrawals were over.

“I’m-- fuck. I’m fine. I swear.” He responded unconvincingly.

“That’s not what you said last night... no offense, but I’m not fully inclined to believe you when you look like shit.”

“It- It... it’s not something I’d like to talk about, if that’s alright. And... don’t tell Clarisse, please.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, don’t worry. But I would like to know if this is going to be a common occ--” Before he could even finish asking, Will was already shaking his head and responding.

“One-time thing only, I promise. Gods, I’m sorry I showed up here at all.”

“Woah, buddy. That’s not what I was saying at all. You’re my best friend, I’m glad you came here.” Will almost couldn’t believe what Nico was saying. Then again, did Nico have very many friends? Nico himself certainly didn’t seem to think so. “In any case, you don’t have to explain what happened, or what led up to this, or anything like that. I don't need to know. What I do need you to do, however, is take a shower. I’m sorry to say so, but you smell like ass.”

“Yeah well, I’m…” He couldn’t finish his sentence. How do you explain to someone that he still wanted his drugs, and he didn’t want to leave the cabin because he knew he would leave to go find some before he would even think about going to his own cabin at this point.

“You don’t have to leave,” Nico said, perhaps sensing his agitation. “I have a shower in the cabin.”

“What the fuck do you mean you have a shower in the cabin?” The shock of this knowledge get him out of his stuck mind. “How did you get plumbing in here? How did Chiron allow this?”

“I helped design my cabin, and while I may not have all the experience in architecture that Annabeth does, I do know a thing or two. I did meet with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, you know.”

“I did not know. You- Who is Isambard Kingdom Brunel?” Will asked

“Oh, some civil engineer who is like a million years old.” Will scoffed at that.

“You’re one to talk,” he teased. He was never going to let go of the fact that Nico was technically like 80 years old.

“Oh hush, William.” William… never Will, like most people. William… like he was something special, something that deserved three syllables. “Anyways, like I was saying: take a shower. You look like you were up mowing all of camp with a flashlight.”

Knowing Will’s reaction to drugs, that wasn’t unlikely. He stood up. “Lead the way? I’ve never been around your cabin before.”

Nico’s cabin was unlike any others. Using some sort of Doctor Who-like technology, there was a living room, a kitchen, and one room. Surprisingly, the walls were all light or pastel, a stark contrast from Nico’s general (and unintentional) punk-rock appearance. However, the furniture was all a deep black. Nico led him to his room, a minimalistic one with a bed, a desk, and a lamp. Will wondered where all the personalization was, but made no comment.

“Here’s the shower,” Nico pointed to yet another room in this somehow huge cabin. “If you see something amiss or odd… ignore it.” Will didn’t want to think of the implications of that sentence.

He stepped in the shower and oh my gods, watching the dirt and grime wash off him after his 8 hour high-- which he did not want to think about (and not just because the author doesn’t want to taint his search history), it was too embarrassing-- was a wonderful feeling. He was still tired. He didn’t know why, it didn’t used to be this hard. However, he was pretty sure that he tried to clean the entire outside of the hypnos cabin before going over to the Hades cabin to do the same. This was the first and last time Will would ever thank the gods for Nico’s poor sleeping patterns, he had heard him outside and came to get him before he tired himself out more.

He nearly passed out in the shower again but managed to make it out. He looked around the well-stocked bathroom and realized something that he probably should have bothered to notice before: he didn’t have any clothes with him. Fuck. He wrapped a (black) towel around his chest because he didn’t think his body could take anymore binding and prayed to Dionysus that Nico didn’t notice that his chest wasn’t exactly male.

Luckily, the first thing Nico did say was “Is that a tattoo?”

Will looked down at his sun. “Yeah, it is,” he smiled. He remembered the night he did it, it was kind of hard. He ordered a tattoo gun off amazon and had Frankie do it for him shortly after the Battle of Manhattan. Some people might think it’s in honor of his dad, which is fine. It was really for Lee Fletcher, though. His mom totally freaked, for a really long time, but after his C-PTSD diagnoses she realized that whatever works for him works as long as it isn’t drugs or self harm. He knows she wants a future for him that doesn’t involve music, and that’s why she freaked. She thought it would ruin his chances. But it’s right on his shoulder, only visible in tank tops or no shirt.

"It… its to honor the man who taught me I could be myself." Will said after a small pause.

"That's a very lovely sentiment. If he made that much of an impact on you, he must be a very cool person."

"He was." Will knew that Nico heard the was by the way that Nico nodded solemnly. "I uh… I don't wish to be more of a bother, but do you mind if I go to bed now? That shower really helped."

"Yeah, of course. I can take the couch, you know where my bed is-"

"No, absolutely not." Nico sighed softly, as though he expected this. "I can sleep on the couch, in Austin I actually prefer it to my bed."

"That's-- no offense William, but that's weird."

"It feels less lonely to me," Will protested, then let out a huge yawn.

"Alright cowboy-" Will smiled at Nico's nickname for him "-get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

"Nighty night, Neeks. Love you." he didn't miss the small smile on Nico's face before he walked away. Will has always been very loose with his 'I love you's like that. He figured it's better to say it too much than not enough.

He had found his old stash the night before, the one that Clovis had helped him forget about. He couldn't stop himself from thinking about last nights events. At the time,he told himself that he shouldn't do anything with it, and put it out of his mind for about a week, but eventually his urge to smoke overcame his self-control. He went on a rampage of cleaning and was absolutely certain he looked like a madman. The worst part is, he didn't even know why he did it. It was as though his rehabilitation hadn't even happened, as though this was something that was as natural as getting a cup of coffee in the morning. He was so mad at himself, so embarrassed.

These thoughts occupied his mind until he fell asleep about an hour after his last words to Nico. He slept with no dreams, for the first time in about a month.  

word count: 2,245

[i-spilled-my-soup]

jesus hoo is so bad #1

why is everyone op.

remember in the titans curse, when percy made the mistake of striking atlas head-on without a strategy? remember when he immediately regretted it, because, by law, an immortal couldn't make the first move on a mortal? and remember when he thought, "i screwed up. this is one of the strongest titans out there, and i attacked him without a plan. i have to put all my will into this battle in order to make it out alive" and then percy got his butt whooped for a few minutes while trying to fight back against a titan?

and then, in the last olympian, he takes on the curse of achilles, and scares himself with just how much he exerts himself in battle, and how tired he gets afterwards?

well, now in hoo he can come face to face with tartarus, a primordial being, and deadass gets by the fucking immortal being in the same generation of the predecessors of the titans, while in his own realm?

what????

and okay i guess he can survive in tartarus for some reason. i guess tartarus won't kill the two demigods who could wreck this "plan" he and gaea have early cause why would he do that? i mean, it totally wouldn't benefit him in any way, and its not like two teenagers could get past him and several armies of monsters, right????

and oh okay piper can manipulate immortals with her voice to the point of physically harming them. and okay jason has total control over lighting and wind, even when hes in the realm of poseidon. okay leo can build a warship by himself and he can literally program his pet dragon to bring him back to life. okay frank gets the blessing of ares twice, just for killing a couple dozen cows. and okay hazel can bend metal and stab a giant in the butt. and okay nico can make hundreds of bones explode out of the ground. oh nice reyna gets a blessing from the immortal pegasus. yes their powers are not at all overemphasized and it is totally believable that they are teenagers.

rick, what were you thinking? making characters have otherworldy powers doesnt make them "cool" or "badass", it just makes them seem unrealistic, even for demigods, and it makes it hard for readers to view them as actual people with actual stories and actual emotions and growth. you have to make them change, and making them stronger than they already are is not gonna help(neither is making them miserable because the universe hates them but thats for another day).

[geek-patient-zero]

Prologue (Part 1)

Or: My Dinner with Reuben

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Dead Trilogy Volume 1

I always loved the cover art. It was done by an artist called BROM. Here’s his website.

Robert Weinberg dedicates the book to Edgar Allan Poe “for obvious reasons” and Bram Stoker “who started it all”, though Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu might disagree with that. On Poe, peppered throughout the book, between the three parts and on the back cover are short quotes from his works, mostly “The Masque of the Red Death”. Obviously. It’s a little BS though. Any elements inspired by Poe are shallow, at least in this book.

Underneath the dedication is a little disclaimer:

While the locations and history of this trilogy may seem familiar, it is not our reality. The setting of Vampire: The Masquerade of the Red Death is a harsher, crueler version of our world. It is a stark, desolate landscape where nothing is what it seems. It is truly a World of Darkness.

For in the grim dark 1990′s there is only war. And vampires.

Going into the book I thought this disclaimer was a little wanky. I expected that “a harsher, crueler version of our world” would translate to “our world but with more rats, goths, and supernatural creatures.” Similarly, the book’s spine labels the genre as “Dark Fantasy” which in my experience usually translates to “regular fantasy but with more rape.” Turns out the World of Darkness setting is a little more complicated than that, but most of the time Weinberg isn’t too subtle on the whole “darker version of our world” thing.

I just want to let you know, before we get started, that I’m not the biggest expert when it comes to V:TM lore. I’ve never played the tabletops, or read their source books. My knowledge comes from Bloodlines, wiki binges, and lore dumps on Reddit and the Something Awful Bloodlines 2 thread. Please bear with my dumb ass if I get something wrong.

Alright, enough preamble, let’s get to the actual story.

We start in Rome, June 15, 1992, at an outdoor restaurant near the Coliseum. A meeting there was set up the night before through an anonymous phone call to the “heart of the Vatican.” For a suitcase full of money, they’d talk about vampires, or as the book dramatically puts it:

“We will talk,” declared the mysterious voice in somber, cold tones, “of The Kindred.”

The first to arrive is Father Naples, named so because it’s a word you’d find on a map of Italy. He’s a member of the Society of Leopold, who only get one more brief mention after this prologue so all you need to know is that they’re Catholic vampire hunters. He’s a big buff guy, described like a cross between a priest and a high ranking CIA agent. He came unarmed.

His faith served as his shield.  Along with the five other agents of the Society of Leopold in the restaurant, including two women disguised as streetwalkers.

The Society of Leopold is the “the devil was behind this” kind of religious, so it’s weird they’d jump straight to hookers when thinking of disguises for their agents, or that said agents would agree to it. But this is the World of Darkness, a harsher, crueler version of our own, and that means there’s hookers everywhere, so put on the hot pants and think of Italy.

So Father Florence here’s got his disguised agents, who “carried enough firepower on them to start a minor war.” He’s also something of a badass.

And, though he had retired years before as a field operative, Father Naples still maintained his training in the martial arts. An expert at both kendo and karate, he could kill an attacker a dozen different ways.

He’s also got some agents in a nearby hotel room with a directional microphone aimed at his table to record the conversation. Soon, the target of all this seeming overkill arrives; a blonde mid-twenties guy in a white suit. His voice was different than the one who made the phone call, implying to Naples, and us, that there’s at least two people involved on the other side of this setup. It’s a neat bit of foreshadowing. After a firm handshake and no-selling Father Naples’s patented death glare, the stranger introduces himself as Reuben, “like the sandwich.” They banter a bit about the biblical Reuben before he decides to troll the Father a bit. First by saying he’s older than he looks, then by passing on the Father’s offer of wine.

“No thank you,” said Reuben. “I do not drink wine.”

He waits a beat for a reaction, then orders a Coke and a menu. I think I like Reuben.

Since vampires can’t eat or drink (unless they have high Humanity and a good dice roll) Father Naples is thus satisfied that the guy is not a vampire trying to trick him, deciding he’s “definitely human. And not very clever.” Reuben had made an obligatory knock at airline food, so now Naples believed the agents recording the conversation could use this clue to track down his real name and where he came from through airline records.

They get to the You Got the Cash/You Got the Stuff part of negotiations, with Reuben showing off the twenty million US dollars in his briefcase (Not euro because we’re the only country whose currency matters fuck you Italy) in exchange for a monologue from Naples about the history of the Kindred, starting from the beginning. Reuben says Father Naples can summarize if need be.

“Summarize?... How does one summarize ten thousand years of absolute evil? An impossible task, but let me try.”

The rest of the prologue until the end is Naples’ exposition on vampires while he drinks a shit ton of vino. Since it’s Vampire: The Masquerade Lore 101, I’ll summarize like our pal Naples.

Vampires secretly control the world. There are thirteen vampire clans descended from Caine, of Cain and Abel fame only spelled with an e for some reason. Ye olde Caine killed his brother, though I once read that in this setting it wasn’t so much just committing the first murder as introducing the very concepts of murder and killing to reality and basically ruining everyone’s lives, including demons. God punished Caine by giving him vampirism, forcing him to kill to survive for inventing killing. The vampirism also gave him superpowers, so he’s like a little bloodsucking demigod. I’ve seen jokes about God punishing Caine by giving him cool superpowers, but according to Father Naples Caine needed them because everyone knew what happened and were pissed at him for inventing murder and eating them. When everyone and everything wants to kill you on sight you need to be OP to survive and then feel sad about it.

(He also didn't learn most of those powers until later, when he met Lilith.)

Caine discovered that he could make more vampires through the classic “drain their blood to the point of near death and then feeding them your own blood” method. He sired three new vampires, who weren’t as powerful as him but still quite capable of ruining your day, a trend that continues through twelve or thirteen vampiric generations, although the latest generations are puny compared to Caine and his kids.

Caine and the Second Generation founded Enoch, the First City, and were worshiped there as gods, I’m guessing because of a mixture of fear and the hope of getting some sweet vampire powers if you suck up to the first murderer. The Second Generation then sired the Third Generation, thirteen vampires that became known as the Antediluvians. They’re the ones the modern thirteen vampire clans descend from. 

Then everything goes to shit for Caine. Again. The Antediluvians, ambitious dicks, rose up and killed the Second Generation, destroying Enoch in the process. This could be thought of as Caine’s true curse: being forced to watch his childer, and their childer, and so on plot against and murder each other as he had done to his brother, and generally being a plague on mankind. See, Vampire: The Masquerade can be a bit too try-hard edgy and horny at times, but then you also get neat bits of writing and lore like that. As for Caine, he disappeared after the fall of Enoch. He’s now a cab driver in Los Angeles. Or a hermit in Greece, messing with traveling scholar vampires. Or both. Depends on who you ask. No, really. I’m being serious.

I should mention that, religious guy that he is, Father Naples likes to pepper his monologue with casual mentions of the devil. He says things like...

“It was then, in his darkest despair, that Caine learned from Satan a monsterous secret.”

“Encouraged by Satan, Caine created three such monsters.”

“And, in time, urged by Lucifer, they, too, bestowed the gift of eternal life on a select group of their victims.”

“They knew not the Lord God, but Lucifer, the Dark Angel.”

...and generally blaming the big guy below for getting the vampires to do vampire things. While most of what Father Naples says about the setting’s history is correct, the Satan stuff isn’t. Lucifer is a character in the World of Darkness, specifically Demon: The Fallen, but he has nothing to do with V:TM. This adds a neat bit of characterization and unreliability to Naples’ narrative; something Reuben will point out at the end of the prologue.

The Great Flood happened, but Father Naples doesn’t mention it. He skips to the Antediluvians founding the Second City, which didn’t get a name like Enoch because in its two thousand years of existence apparently no one could think of one. With the support of their childer, the fourth generation, they ruled over the Second City and, according to Naples, enslaved humanity. But eventually humanity rose up against the vampires, killing some of them with sunlight, fire, and beheading. The Second City fell and the surviving vampires fled. The Antediluvians disappeared. Some modern day vampires believe the Antediluvians were all dead, while others (the correct ones, turns out) believe they’re hiding, resting in torpor (a kind of vampire coma) this whole time and one day, they’d wake up and, as Father Naples says, “...the world of the Undead shall tremble.” This is our first mention in this book of Gehenna, the end of the wold according to the Kindred. He also says their return was predicted in Revelations, but I’m no biblical expert so I can’t tell you what bits of Revelations that might be referring too.

Reuben asks what happened to the fourth generation, or the Methuselahs as they’re now known because they’re old as balls but not “lived before the Biblical Flood” old. Father Naples tells him, then goes on to explain the titular Masquerade, vampire factions, and the thirteen clans.

[kathillards]

rangerstop day one

ALSO KNOWN AS: BITCH EVERY POWER RANGER REMEMBERED US FROM MORPHICON (except selwyn. but hes still valid.)

so we avoided the megaforce rangers all day bc we wanted to surprise them at our photo op so for most of the con we wandered around looking at art and toys and bought so much shit oh my god there are so many talented artists here one lady was selling POTTED CLAY DOLLS and i almost bought a kat doll but. restraint. because i spent $80 at ceevee’s table and i still want more from him (he also remembered me from morphicon I LOVE POWER RANGERS YOU GUYS. I LOVE POWER RANGERS SO MUCH. I DONT HAVE ANY MORE ROOM ON MY WALL FOR THESE PRINTS BUT IM GONNA FUCKING MAKE ROOM.)

FIRST UP mike ginn because i got ceevee’s huge rpm gold and silver prints to get signed by them and the minute i got up to his table he was like “oh hi didn’t i see you at morphicon” and i was like YES and he was like “and weren’t there a bunch of you” and i was like YEAH LOOK ITS MY FRIENDS and he was like “and one of them was like super shy” because at pmc abbey had told him that our friend tabby loved him but was shy so he called her “shy tabby” and we all pointed at tabby who was trying to hide from him and we were all laughing and he just pointed at her for a minute to tease her and then he walked around his table and got behind her and pretended he was gonna jump at her it was so FUNNY AND CUTE HE LOVES HER HES THE CUTEST and he wanted us all to be in the pic i bought and i mean who am i to say no to mike ginn, the greatest gold ranger of all time

SECOND well li ming was busy (bc she’s a LEGENDARY RANGER BITCH WE STAN THE QUEEN OF RPM) so we turned around and jessica rey was there and SHE WAS LIKE “DIDNT I MEET YOU GUYS AT MORPHICON” because we talked to her for like literally 20 minutes at pmc just shittalking jdf and we were like HELL YEAH ugh she’s the cutest and we again talked to her for like 20 minutes (no shittalking this time) about what we loved about wild force and she was telling us about the alyssa’s father episode bc duh thats our fave and how the actor who played her father was like a famous actor but she knew him bc he was the real dad of one of the PAs and she didnt know he was famous and it was so cute shes so cute and tabby bought a white tiger hat from her (and a bunch of other things BUT THE HATS WERE HAND-CROCHETED THEYRE SO CUTE) and she was telling us just like. shit that happened in her day. and we LOVE her shes so great. AND THEN while we were talking to jessica, ann marie crouch came back bc they’re sharing a booth!! and she was dressed in her princess shayla outfit!! so kat and ben started talking to her god shes so nice and beautiful and she was selling little christmas ornaments of her flowers from her headband they’re so pretty and i told her “wild force rangers are ON POINT with the merch bc everyone else just has headshots” and she was like omg did you hear that w/ her handler and they high-fived (bc her handler made the ornaments) AND THEYRE SO CUTE. JESSICA TOLD US TO COME BACK SO WE WILL bc we have more things to get signed by them. she was also wearing a white tiger wild force hoodie she looked so cute.

THIRD then li ming was free and ofc i had to get her to sign my rpm silver print and shes SO NICE AND PRETTY AND she asked us what the japanese on the print said and we were like “it says you’re the best rpm ranger” and that gem’s said “my sister is cooler than me” and she laughed and we told her how much we loved her in the anniversary and how she was the strongest and most powerful rpm ranger and how she was the REAL LEADER gosh i love her and then we took my photo and SHE LET ME HOLD HER RPM TOY GUN THING i love herrr

FOURTH oh god okay so abbey couldnt be here but we wanted to get her shit so we went to sean cw johnson’s table bc duh and sapphire steph (of sapphire management, she handles like. a lot of rangers. SHES SO COOL) was handling him and we were talking to her and kat facetimed abbey to show her all of sean’s merch and he had these little coins that we got for abbey and asked if he could sign them and we were just talking to steph i dont even know about what i love her and abbey was on the phone and we were like telling them that she loves lightspeed thats why we’re facetiming and SEAN ASKED TO FACETIME HER AND SAY HI bc she was right there and also i showed him  and steph abbey’s little carter art of “get in losers we’re going demon hunting” and they both LOVED IT and then he was like “wait ive seen this art before” and i was like “yeah bc you fucking replied to my tweet about how dino charge is better than lightspeed” and he was like “oh yes i do remember that you said it was worse than watching paint dry and you wanted to gouge your eyes out with a spoon” and i was like I DIDNT SAY THAT I WASNT THAT MEAN (i was pretty mean, im so sorry sean i love you) im not gonna link the tweet bc I CANT BELIEVE HE FUCKING REPLIED TO IT AND REMEMBERED bc he was like “i’m not even on social media” and i was like “well you popped up in my notifs soooo” and he was like “no i respect your opinion even if you’re wrong” lmao and he asked what i didnt like about it and obviously i couldnt say “too many white people” to his face so i said i watched 20 episodes it was boring and we HATED captain mitchell bc we hate shitty mentors and we only love rangers and he was like “okay that’s fair” and i was like “and i didnt like that carter had this whole hero worship thing of captain mitchell when he was a shitty dad and like... is this your king???” (i literally said that why am i like this) and he was like “oh well he was kind of my king” and steph was cracking up at the black panther reference she was like “you guys are a hoot” oh and then we got him to do a video shout out where he says abbeys fave line “freeze missiles? sounds cool” and we were like DO IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT, YOURE AN ACTOR so he pretended to get in character and it was so cute and he told me also “i respect that you’re not fake and you stand by your opinions” and i was like ya cuz lightspeed sucks (no i didnt say that) cuz he was like “some people will be like ‘time force is overrated’ and then go up to michael copon (his booth was behind us) and be like ‘oh i’m a huge fan’” and we were like oh we’d never do that and he loved us even though i was so mean to him IM SORRY SEAN I WILL BUY SOMETHING FROM YOU TOMORROW as we were leaving he said to me “tomorrow you can be fake its fine” hes literally like. so cool. and also handsome. but lightspeed is still boring im sorry.

FIFTH we were wandering around again looking at toys and shit and tabby and ben wanted dino bite cafe shirts so we went to marvels by mossers which was right next to brennan and the sudarso brothers and we started talking to the guy there (aiden, not mosser) about, you know, the stuff they were selling and whatnot he’s so cool like they’re all so cool we talked for ages?? bc tabby had to go to the atm to get money and she took forever so we were just standing around saving her spot in line and aiden asked us like how we became friends when we’re all from different states and we told him we met online bc we love power rangers and we met up at morphicon and loved it so much we came to rangerstop and he was like oh thats so cool (this will be important later ok) anyway im just saying WE HAVE SO MUCH FUN JUST TALKING TO PEOPLE LIKE JUST. JUST TALK TO THEM. EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT POWER RANGERS. like this guy wasnt even a pr fan but he was so chill anyway i love everyone in this bar.

then we went out to eat but got distracted by gazbot’s booth of his HELLA COOL PRINTS and we bought abbey a balance print and an alpha print and kat bought all the six megaforce rangers and tbh tomorrow im gonna go back and get ninja steel blue BECAUSE while this was happening peter texted me “saw you and said hi but you seemed busy haha” becAUSE i did not stop to say hi to him (because he had a line!) while we were by marvels for mossers anyway i felt bad but we were hungry so went out to the food trucks and we saw two ranger actors whom we will not name come out to smoke together which was HILARIOUS (we love them anyway its ok) and THEN

SIXTH we came back inside bc i wanted brennan to sign my dino charge red print that i got from ceevee (also a shoutout to his handler who is really cool and talked to us and just. guys. i love everyone. i love EVERYONE.) and hes sooooo pretty god and his handwriting is so cute it looks like a child bc he’s left-handed and i asked him why the other dino charge rangers werent there and he was like “well davi’s filming and michael and camille dont really do cons” lmao and i told him i went to school w/ michael and camille and he was like “oh cool my sister-in-law went to that school” when i told him what university it was anyway hes just so pretty. im blanking on most of our conversation. then ben talked to him bc they’re both left-handed and reminded him that he instagrammed ben’s art and they message on insta and it was very cute #bennan for life bitches he also signed ben’s dino charge hat

SEVENTH so you know yoshi and peter are right next to brennan so i was with taylor (@ crossbuild on twitter, rocking the ryuga banjou cosplay) and she wanted to meet the sudarsos so we went over to say hi and peter came over and hugged me and we talked and he was like “since i dyed my hair blonde ive gotten like three more roles” and i was like “blonde privilege” (he looked. surprisingly good with it.) and he was telling me that he and yoshi are playing monkey demigod brothers?? or something and that’s why they both dyed their hair blonde and we also talked about kamen rider (bc taylor mentioned it) and he said he wants to watch wizard and i was like YES WATCH WIZARD ITS MY FAVE and he was like “everyone says bad things about it!” and i was like FUCK THEM JUST BECAUSE ITS SLOW-PACED and he was like “no you know i love slow pace” and i was like yes its very episodic but its SO GOOD THE CHARACTERS ARE SO GOOD they just had an issue w/ the lead actress being an idol and he was like “oh well so is lupinyellow” and i was like DO YOU ACTUALLY WATCH LUPATO bc he does keep up w/ sentai but hes always behind and he was like “dont spoil me im three eps behind” and i was like “well thats pretty good for you and also nothing happens in lupato” and he was so offended on its behalf and i was like “name one thing thats happened peter” and he was like “uh gold showed up???” and i was like “that happens every season” but then i was like “dont get me wrong i love lupato its my fave show of all time” (because it absolutely fucking is) and he was like “i thought so i was so confused” lmao (bc like. im always tweeting about how much i love lupato.) anyway yeah i asked him which kamen riders he’d watched and he was like “you know this pearl” which i did i just enjoy pretending i dont know anything about him. watch wizard y’all. and meanwhile, while i was talking to peter, ben and the others were meeting yoshi and ben was getting his dino charge dvd signed and he gave yoshi his art of koda WHICH YOSHI LOVED and ben was gonna pay $30 for the autograph but yoshi was like “no take it back” and he was like “you’re not gonna sell th dvd right” and ben was like “no i’m keeping it forever” and he was like “ya then you’re not paying for it” bc he LOVED THE ART AND HE LOVES BEN AND US hes so handsome irl like fuck man. who allowed dino charge rangers to exist in the mortal realm. he also gave me and ben cheetos later (he offered them to everyone, we were the only ones who accepted. i love hot cheetos.) 

EIGHTH we went to the alphas to get the alpha print signed for abbey and first of all, david fielding’s (zordon) handler was there (david wasnt there) and we were talknig to him and he was like oh im a HUGE power rangers fan i have boxes in my basement full of old power rangers toys and we were like “oh big mood” he was cool too man everyone is so cool i just love. to talk to them. and kat was getting the alpha print signed by romy and she was SO SWEET and we told her how much abbey loved alpha and went to search her art on twitter to show her and she LOVED ALL OF IT she was so sweet her handler was so sweet too and then we went to peta’s booth AND SHE HAD ALPHA GAY PRIDE SHIRTS AND STICKERS so we’re gonna buy those for abbey tomorrow

after that we were hanging around the nearby toy booth avoiding the megaforce rangers who were RIGHT next to the alphas (all together bc they’re codependent losers and we love them) and AIDEN FROM MARVELS BY MOSSER CAME OVER WITH A DINO CHARGE IRON-ON PATCH AND JUST SHOVED IT IN BENS HAND AND SAID “i want you to have this for free because i loved talking to you guys and you deserve it and i love when people meet like you guys did” bc of our little story of how we became online friends and met up and love each other and LIKE. BEN WAS ABOUT TO CRY. I LOVE US AND EVERYONE AT THIS CON. 

NINTH so we went back across the room to the sudarsos bc ben wanted to give peter his preston and marv art so i was like “we have something for you” and shoved ben at him and he LOVED THE ART (of course bc ben’s art is amazing) and was like “i’ve seen this on twitter dont i follow you” and ben was like noo you dont and i was like “no, i just retweet ben all the time so hes on your timeline anyway” AND THEN HE PULLED OUT HIS PHONE AND FOLLOWED BEN IN FRONT OF US and then also later he took a SELFIE w/ the three pieces ben gave him and tweeted about finally getting to meet this amazing artist and @-ed ben and it currently has like 100 likes so ya ben’s famous now go follow him @brodyromero 

AND THEN FOR THE MAIN EVENT THE MEGAFORCE PHOTO OP THAT WE BOUGHT AND WANTED TO SURPRISE THEM TONIGHT AND we also went to walmart earlier and got rainbow cupcakes for them and a candle that says 5 to celebrate their 5th anniversary bc we are that extra. side note, there was an ADORABLE little boy in line behind us in a pink mmpr diamonds t-shirt and he was freaking out at everyone and saw a blue ninja steel cosplayer and went OH MY GOD ITS NINJA STEEL BLUE and he was the only valid fan at the entire con and we let him cut in front of us (well we let everyone cut bc we wanted to be the last people in bc we are dramatique)

TENTH THE MEGAFORCE RANGERS so like the whole day we’ve been stressing “what if they dont remember us what if they dont care what if they dont” and then we entered and the literal second they saw us it was like. azim’s WHOLE FACE LIT UP AND HE WENT “OH MY GOD YOU GUYS CAME ITS MY GIRLS” (cuz remember we’re #azimsangels as per his hashtag) and HUGGED US ALL IMMEDIATELY oh hes such a good hugger and they saw our cupcakes and we were like “its for you for your fifth anniversary!” and they were so happy and surprised and ciara was like so jumpy and she like hugged us all SO BIG SHES SO CUUUUUTE they are all so fucking cute cameron remembered us too and came to give us hugs and kat got pity hugs from christina and john mark, the dignified ones (they were very nice, its just everyone else was clearly high and super jumpy and SO HAPPY TO SEE US) and andrew was just there looking gorgeous. sorry i cant say anything about him bc if u look into his eyes u black out and that happens to all of us. idk if he said anything. hes too pretty to exist. and we were like WE CAME TO FLORIDA TO SEE YOU GUYS because we loved meeting you at morphicon so much (which is TRUE we planned this all so last-minute bc we were like. fuck it lets go to fucking rangerstop we wanna see the megacast again.) and god they were so HAPPY. AZIM WAS SO HAPPY. CAMERON HUGGED ME SO TIIIIGHT. azim like crushed us all in a group hug the second he saw us. and then we took the photo and ciara literally just JUMPED into ben and kat and tabby’s laps bc they were sitting on the chairs and i got in the back in the middle of ALL FOUR BOYS like oh my god i cant even look at myself in the picture we got bc i’m surrounded by the literal hottest guys in the world like what the fuck. andrew gray TOUCHED ME. like holy fuck. and christina posed w/ the cupcakes and cameron held the 5 candle and was like “COME ON JOHN LETS BLOW IT OUT” and that was their pose and the rest of us were just cheesin and god its so cuuute im gonna make them all autograph it tomorrow and i also got megaforce red and silver prints from ceevee to get andrew and cameron to sign. and then after the pic christina tried to give us back the cupcakes and we were like NO THEY’RE FOR YOU THEY’RE YOUR BIRTHDAY GIFT and cameron literally started jumping up and down like a little kid he was like “WE GET CUPCAKES” and i was standing next to him so i said “we got rainbow ones so everyone was kind of represented except you sorry” and he looked at me and was like “yeah because nobody cares about silver” and i was like nooo its bc its hard to put silver on frosting and he was like yeah thats true AND THEN as we were leaving and they were like thank you for the cupcakes!! he was like “are there drugs in them” and kat was like “no” and tabby was like “yes” and i said “next time, for your 10 year anniversary” and andrew was like “ten years!” all chill like. i love him. king of red rangers. cameron said “love youuuu” to us as we left. i would quite literally die for all of them.

afterwards we were waiting around to get our reprints and azim came out and stopped to talk to us and we were like “where the fuck is your girlfriend we only came to see her” and he told us she’s flying to london :( and then he was like “are you guys coming tomorrow come hang out at our booths” (we were like “we have shit for you to sign we’re not just gonna loiter” and he was like “no just come hang out”) and he said “i wanna tell you guys the most heartwarming story that’s happened at rangerstop, a four year saga” so he like. REALLY wants us to come back tomorrow like what a cliffhanger that was!!

we also saw catherine and li ming bc the 25th anniversary photo op was right after us they’re so pretty!! im gonna visit catherine tomorrow and get my PINK RANGER W/ DRAGON SHIELD PRINT SIGNED BY HER ugh ceevee’s art is literally so amazing bitch. fuck. and then steve was also there and tabby was like “we love you steve!” (she said that for every actor that passed us but nobody heard her EXCEPT STEVE) and he stopped and turned back and was like HEY GUYS, love him. AND THEN SELWYN ALSO SHOWED UP FOR THE PHOTO OP and then on our way out of the photo op hallway he was ahead of us getting water in the hotel lobby so we stopped and said hi and introduced ourselves and i was like “we met you at morphicon” and he was like hmm (he was the only one who didnt rmr us at all clearly BUT HES STILL SO VALID. I LOVE YOU SELWYN.) and he was like “why don’t you guys get a picture with me” and we were like “well we’ll be here tomorrow to see you” and he was like “no we gotta do it right now” so he and tabby took a selfie LITERALLY THE CUTEST. HES SO HANDSOME. I LOVE POWER RANGERS.

also psycho red is hot

[rpjohnston]

RWBY spoilers! V6E5

So I actually remembered to do this about halfway through, was busy watching the sweet fisticuffs. -Neo is back! I knew this was coming because I read analyses of the OP on this site. I would never have noticed the hooded figure was Neo otherwise, or recognized the hat. -Nice brawl though. Last time we saw Neo in single action she was tossing Yang around. Damn Cinder is powerful - she’s holding even with Neo, despite being unarmed, and without even using godpowers. -Neo still doesn’t speak. I wonder what’s up with that. I actually didn’t notice it all through the first act, since she basically played the dragon to Roman and that guy couldn’t shut up (not that I wanted him to he was one of the best characters!) Her main appearances were in the fight against Yang, where there wasn’t any need to speak - she was just being a distraction, and Yang didn’t know her - and Roman’s final fight, where he stole all the lines. -Speaking of, I really wonder where her arc’s going to go. She was...well, just The Dragon when seen before (the Dragon to a Dragon, really). Her only character quality was “mysteriouswtfbbq??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “ Now she’s going to have to be a real character...and that’s going to be hard to tie in to her “character” from before with the tonal shift between the first and second act of this series. Bringing in her backstory...is going to clash with the previous tone, almost certainly. I’ll be forthright - it would take genious writing to make that harmonic, and I’d classify the post-Monty writing as “adequate to good”. -Anyway, fight seemed kind of...shoehorned in, but hey, I had fun. -And now it’s time for hijinks in the spooooooopy haunted mansion! Calling it: it was an old prospector in a Nuckelavee mask scaring everyone away so he could get the land deed for cheap. There will be a door-running scene, Techno Granny Katara will lose her goggles and trip the “monster”, and Yang and Blake will accidentally capture it while trying to escape -Can’t say any of the farmers look familiar. I’d say maybe it was Techno Granny Katara’s backstory (Yes, I will type that every time), but they already commented that it looked newly abandoned. Where was Jaune from again? It wasn’t Anima, was it? -Oh wait it was Anima, but further south -AAAAAHHHHHHHHH! It’s a ghost story!!! Weiss!!!! -alright, mummified corpses! Starting out strong! -Damn, I was hoping Qrow would say “You look like you’ve seen a ghost”

-”I’ll do a sweep of the grounds. No one else goes anywhere alone. Except for me, Qrow, he master of bad luck. I’ll be the first to disappear. Ruby, Oscar, you better solve this shit and rescue me, Yang, Blake and Weiss -” “Hey why do you think we’re -” “- and then tell Maria who to whack.” “-What you think the old lady is-” “See ya later, kids.” -I dunno, Rubby looked like she was walking kind of stiffly to me? Like they were trying to make her hips not sway. Like I did for a bit in middle school. I got told I as walking like a duck -You forgot the hood, Obi-Weiss Keschneebi

-Eat ice cream, feel better. I’m down for this. Just eat your worries away -Techno Granny Katara’s going to teach Oscar/Ozpin, Progenitor of Stories, Redeemer of the World’s History, Ur-Demigod, Old Enough To Be Your 50x Great Grandpa, about fairy tales. You go, badass grandma. -Cool, I’m here for Yang/Blake content. I ship almost nothing and Bumblebee is one of them. In fact it’s the only hill I’ll...er, ship I’ll sink on. Well, maybe Korrasami too. -...Streetlegal? Any of these writers ever been anywhere near farmland? You couldn’t drive that in a city, sure, but out on the country highways? You’ll get stuck behind a tractor, or worse, every time. Really dunno what this comment is about. -Oh yeah, Kefka poisoned the water, of course. -Oh dang that PTSD flashback almost scared even me. That was hella effective oh shit. -...serious consequences for the White Fang. None can stand in the way of the entitled fuckboi -speaking of which, every time he appears I’m reminded that Blake was like, 16 at most when they were “together” and he was 20 and....ughhhhhhhh -squeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -Oh come on, Yang. ...Sigh. Oh well. If the ship has a rudder but no steering wheel, then that’s that. If that’s how it is, I hope that Yang at least doesn’t punch a hole in it -Blake metaphorically left in the cold is not lost on me =( -Surprisingly low-render of booze. You never see that. If someone on the team remember to put in the booze, they remember to give it painstaking detail. I think this is a teetotal team with one boozy friend. -Why the spooky candlelight lighting in a world of electricity and technofuturism? Oh well, it’s all fairytale stuff, makes sense -...I was all set to laugh about Boozy Uncle Qrow, then realized, uh, drinking himself dead is actually kinda not funny, actually? Also, I’m kinda hammered as I’m writing this -...just don’t fill your stomach up with booze. You’ll get fat, feel awful, and it’s empty calories. -eh, to be honest, some of the voice acting felt a bit...subpar in this episode, and Weiss did there. Like her VA was saying the words that needed to be said because they couldn’t go unsaid, but was just getting through. Well, there’s also matching it to the animation, it’s not exactly freeform is it? so if the animation is just hitting h=what it needs to hit, the performance can’t really be better. -...You can’t really, start a fire with wine. My dad used to take me camping, we’d cook food with an alcohol burner. It doesn’t burn booze; it burns...well, alcohol. Ethanol, methanol, some mixture of the two, but if you dump into a pot of water, sediments, sugar, and various other compounds - what wine/spirits are - you won’t burn shit. If they had the equipment, they could distill alcohol from the spirits...but I doubt even a jury-rigged Dust setup with mason jars and the like could do it, even if any of them had the chemistry and engineering knowledge to do it, which they don’t. Don’t go trying to start fores with booze, kids. Just drink it and fuck the Man. -The silly animation seemed a liiiiittle out of place. Also, I’ll be real; if you want t start a fire, you’ve got a better bet eating the beans and lighting the fart on fire than you do setting spirits on fire. -IT’S PHUNBABA

BREAKING OUT OF THE SEAL Anyway, pretty cool episode, overall. some hits, some misses, liked fight. 8/10

[kingofthenorth49]

Lead, follow, but get the F$%& outta the way.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been 30 days since my last rant.

But what a 30 days it’s been. Trumps gone into hiding, Mr. Potato head is in the White House, and Justin Trudeau is asking for Canadians to just “Trust him “with their very lives as he lines Canada up at the vaccine food bank for developing nations.

Or as I like to call it, the new normal.

Did you miss me sheeple? I know a bunch of you missed my slightly right of center muisings because you told me you did. Well, some of you did. Ok, one of you may have implied you missed hearing my voice booming from the silicone based mountaintops.

So what a shit show eh? The wheels are slowly staring to come off the bus, people are starting to crack and I think if someone doesn’t hurry up and grab the wheel we are all about to go flying over the precipice like a collective Thelma and Louise. Think I’m kidding? Is anyone paying close enough attention to what’s going on. I bet you thought it was cute the first time someone you knew was sent to Facebook jail didn’t you. It was funny to watch someone have their access to “society” cut off because they think differently than you do. Cool isn’t it.

If you were curious to know why I shut down my social media presence in the wake of the cancelling of the President of the United States, you haven’t been playing along. That’s the single most scary thing that I have ever witnessed. Single most scary thing ever.

Imagine if they can cancel the “most powerful” person in the world what they can do to you and I.

I’m going to let that one marinate with you for a bit, it’s fairly deep and really deserves a fair amount of thought because what can happen next is very very very scary.

Anyway, I’m in a fan frickin tastic mood this morning and I’m not going to ruin a nice coffee glow go to waste on the negative, I’ll instead focus on the positive.

So for those playing along at home this week (*groan*) our politicians (much different than our technocrat overlords) are busy trying to find new ways to screw with your life and make you question reality completely. Take it from someone who works with the fine men and women of the politbureau on a daily basis that there’s only one image you need to burn into your brain to completely understand your government’s response to the 2019 through 2028 plandemic.

Visualize a large group of egotistical bears collectively trying to fuck a football.

Now do you get it?

Folks, we have completely lost our collective societal mind at this point. Out east where I live we have political demigods who actually believe they can eradicate a virus by throwing up a stop sign and deputizing a fish cop to interrogate Canadians on why they are getting their groceries on one side of an imaginary taxation line or the other. We literally are ripping families apart, denying people basic dignities, destroying our economic base, pitting peoplekind against peoplekind, and generally just trashing the place.

We are, we are literally trashing the place because we don’t have leaders in the public realm anymore, we have celebrities who think they are leaders because they have nice hair.

You are seeing it. Look no further than the summer residence of the former first lady of Canada, when each day, at the assigned hour of noon, the Crime Minister of Canada arises from his slumber in the basement (Bed head is critical for the 19-35 female demographic), puts on a grim face and parades before the chose few and makes it rain cold hard Canadian taxpayer cash onto the charity de jour so his admirers can watch gleefully from afar and show air hands at the generosity We Canadians show.

All the while our G7 nation is amongst the worst off in the WORLD for vaccinating our subjects.

We should be so proud, but we shouldn’t be surprised. We created this mess by giving everyone a trophy, by making everyone the same. We started penalizing those who excelled in their chosen fields and then we rigged the game.

We lost our way because we chose to follow the wrong type of people.

In my real life I often get to interview people who are vying for their next role, their next step in their careers, and one of the questions I always ask of an aspiring candidate is “Who are your role models and why?”. I think that question speaks volumes about a person’s character and who they aspire to be. But it’s not the first part of the question that’s important to me, it’s the second. I want to know what this persons leadership style is going to be like, because we emulate those we admire most.

Problem is we have chosen to follow leaders like Justin Trudeau and Nancy Pelosi.

Justin Trudeau is not a leader, not even close to being a leader. He’s a figurehead with an ego. He’s not unlike a certain health minister here in our region. They believe their own press. They believe they know what’s best for you & I despite the fact what they are doing isn’t working the way they think it is. They are dangerous leaders, and their actions have led us to the edge of the cliff I spoke of earlier.

We needed a plan, we needed transparency, and we needed bold actions.

We got platitudes and charity for female education in the 3rd world when we should have immediately started construction of ICU surge capacity and pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. We needed a national testing strategy and the ability to convert Canadian fiber into N95 masks and gowns. We needed communities to organize to protect and service their most vunerable. Something as setting up empty hotels for first responders to use while rotating shifts and safe day cares for their children so they could man those lines 100% without having to worry about their families.

Why didn’t our leaders do this?

That’s because they were busy pushing their political agenda’s along versus doing the job they were put in place for in the first place.

I’m disgusted by our politicians in power. Photos ops, daily TV shows where they lead with fear and chastise the unwashed masses for their bad behaviour all the while living not like thee because I’m me. It’s pathetic yet we applaude and say thank you sir, may we please have some more.

I want more vaccines manufactured in Canada for those who want them (you can have mine, I’m good taking my chances with the ‘rona). I want a secure supply of medical PPE made in Canada, not China. I want programs that make sense and policy that follows science, not just medicine. I want a leader to run the crisis response not some medical demigod with an ego on a power trip that will kill more people than it saves.

I want real leadership in times of crisis, not political theater.

I’m beyond frustrated and I know it’s apparent in my prose. I want better for my community, my province, my country, and my world. I want sanity and rationale approaches to get the world moving again. I want politics to go away.

I want a lot apparently.

I want the world back, but to do that we need to shift thinking to a more moderate view versus keeping on the polarizing path we’ve been on the past 20 years. We are allowing politics to control human safety to the point now we are killing people with the controls we put in place to keep people safe. I read a great quote from Mike Rowe last night I think sums up my position on life that I think everyone needs to read.

"if you elevate the business of staying alive to the very, very top of all things, then the only thing you'll ever do is stay alive. You won't go anywhere. You won't try anything or build anything."

This is what we need from our leaders, ones that understand risk and how to translate needs into actions using a transparent plan, not making one up week to week. This is what we should all want.

Ok, I’m done for now.

Get out there and live safely, but live. Oh, and stop voting for celebrities, start voting for leaders.

Love ya all.

Jim Out.

[conceiteddemon]

Spoilers....just.... so much spoilers

So I just got done watching guardians of the galaxy vol 2, and I really liked it. The humor, the bitchin' music, the baby groot. And I really liked the improbable, slightly absurd space dad plot, which basically boiled down to 'fuck you, I'm a space god!' Anyway, at the end of the movie, (and here are the SPOILERS, so just keep scrollin of you want a surprise and haven't seen it yet) Peter also goes all 'fuck you, space dad! I'm a space god too!' (Space demigod? Can I call this Peter Quill and the Celestials of the Universe?) Then punches him repeatedly and blows up a planet. Because he blows up the dad-planet, his bitchin' space god powers don't work now. Or do they??? Probably not, but I've already switched into conspiracy mode, so let's grab our tinfoil hats and overthink this shit! So Peter and his bros blow up the god-power source. That's pretty much the whole point of the final battle. But I don't think it means Star Lord lost his space powers, and if he did, only for a lil bit. Why? Well, mostly because marvel didn't really go super in depth about god genetics or where light power comes from, but aLSO BECAUSE OF DOCTOR STRANGE. now, this is going to sound crazy, and it probably is, but hear me out. Doctor strange is all about alternate dimensions and sorcery and all that, and a HUGE plot point in it is that some crazy wizard idiots can draw power from the 'dark dimension' where another crazy space god lives , Dormmamu. (No idea how to spell his name.) Dormmamu has a lot in common with full-of-himself, Ego, in that: 1.both immortal 2.both physical embodiments of energy, or space, or something 3.both assholes that want to make universe better by destroying it. (More like pulling a borg and assimilating, but same dif.) Now, Ego mentions that he had to do the sideways tango a LOT of times with a LOT of different species(dressed up as the lead singer of a garage band from the seventies, because apparently nothing turns a ball of sentient slime on more than a greasy human looking dude) in order to have a kid that was a space god like him. The problem was most of his kids didn't have the reality warping gene, so he killed them and tried again. BUT HUMANS. Humans were different. The reason Quill got the Space Power is because, in a way, humans ALREADY HAVE IT. Humans, through knowledge, focus, and practice, can create other dimensions, and draw power from less then credible sources like a med student takes out loans, and make magic portals with just a little help from other magic stuff. Now I'm not sure if all humans in the MCU can do this, or just certain people. That's not the point. The point is that some people CAN do it, and maybe Peter's mom was one of them. Not trained, but maybe had the potential to. So the reason Peter was different wasn't because he had the right gene. He was different from everyone else in disappointment cave because he had the right COMBO of genes. All of Ego's kids could, in theory, warp reality, but they COULDN'T CONNECT THEMSELVES TO A POWER SOURCE, like a remote control that had a messed up battery pack. Peter could, and could do it quite easily because he was half god AND half human, the species of 'play with this and see what happens'. Now, I'm not sure about god genetics, like I said earlier, but it's implied in both movies that the asshole space gods aren't just connected to a power source, they ARE that power source. (Hence why Peter could control power easily, he was partly made of, or a part of, Ego's power source.) So, and this is just speculation, but WHAT IF Peter is also, in his own way, a power source? (All of the other god kids were too, but they had absolutely no control over it, since no control genes. What's a limb good for if it isn't connected to the nervous system?) Not an all powerful power source, but maybe a little one, dampened down by mortal genes. This would be AWESOME, though really unlikely, because I want peter to still do cool stuff. Not OP, movie breaking cool stuff, but like plasma ball grenade cool stuff. Scarlet witch with guns and one-liners cool stuff. PLUS, if he's a little bit power source, he could get tapped into by sorcerers, or evil sorcerers, and MAYBE get controlled by them??? Plot idea??? But because he's also got tapping powers, potentially HE COULD tap into, say, the dark dimension, and become like a sub-god to dormmamu, or whatever god he's taking power from. I mean, PROBABLY NOT, but it would be FUCKING AMAZING IF THAT WERE TRUE